


Honor the living

by Ruta



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: After the battle, F/M, Feelings, Pack Dynamics, Revelations, Season Finale, Slow Burn, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:37:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: "Don't we deserve some peace?" He murmurs and the moment she turns her back to him and brings her hands closer to the fireplace - trembling and white - it's the one he moves away from the corner where he was.Jon remains behind her without touching her, perfectly still. In silence. Waiting patiently for a gesture of encouragement, her permission. Even if the desire to touch her is tearing him apart from the inside, especially seeing the tremor move from her hands to her arms and then to the torso and -(After two missing moment before the battle, finally one after. It may be a bit unrealistic.)





	Honor the living

**Author's Note:**

> Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living! (Mary Harris Jones)

  
"So many men are dead. Good men. Men that were brave and loyal. We will never forget them, but that's exactly why we need to move forward. For them and for what has been lost. The best way to honor their legacy is honoring the living. We are still alive thanks to their efforts, their sacrifice."  
  
The wind carries Jon's voice as if it came from far away. At the same time it seems close, as if he were speaking directly to her heart.  
  
The smell of snow and ash, of fiery flames devouring the flesh and bones of the dead, of decomposition and putrefaction fill the air. Will she ever forget it? She doesn't think she'll ever be able to shake it off.  
  
After the pyres are burned to the point of being entirely consumed, only a small group of people don't immediately return to the castle, lingering outside.  
  
Daenerys is among them. She is still facing the pyre of Jorah Mormont, so close that the flames should have burned her. In fact, her cheeks are smeared with soot, streaked with recent tears.  
  
Sansa had already heard the whispers. _Unburnt_. Isn't that one of her numerous titles? The fire is part of her and loves her too much to burn her.  
  
Now that the fire is out, the cold is master again. It's a penetrating cold with melancholy flavors, as familiar as Winterfell's majestic profile behind her. The cold of despair and of mourning. The cold of death.  
  
Sansa remains beside her, respecting her silence, the sharp pain that her figure emanates.  
  
"I didn't know I loved him." She doesn't turn to her. Daenerys speaks without taking her eyes off the pile of ash. (Sansa didn't believe it possible before, but it takes many hours to burn a body. Almost a whole day. The living are left with nothing but waiting, and in the meantime they learn to accept the loss they have suffered.) "I didn't know it until he was dead. Now I guess it's too late to say it."  
  
"It's never too late," she replies. "If not for the dead, at least it's not for the living."  
  
Daenerys looks at her out of the corner of her eyes, as if evaluating what she sees. "Did you love him? Theon Greyjoy."  
  
A pain like this is old and new, like any other wound. For a moment, however, it returns to being devastating, profound and absolute. She has to remember herself to breathe over the lump in her throat. _You can overcome this too. You have to._ She slowly nods. "Like a brother."  
  
Neither of them adds nothing for a while. What good would words do in the end? The silence is comfortable and proceeds until the time comes when it is no longer.  
  
"The North is in your debt," she says. "None more so than l. Without you-"  
  
"You mean my dragons," Daenerys interrupts her with force and sudden harshness, her eyes sharp as shards of splintered glass. Her whole body like iron. "Without my dragons," she corrects her, with quivering nostrils and flashing eyes. "I wouldn't have survived if he hadn't been there. I can hold a sword, but I don't know how to wield it. I am not a warrior," she says bitterly.  
  
Sansa looks at her and it's like looking in a mirror. Because she's like her. With her dragons and her armies removed, she is only a woman who has had to learn to collect the blows before having the strength to fight back. A girl betrayed, wounded, humiliated, who had to grew up in her own skin. In an impulse that she cannot suppress, she rests a hand on Daenerys, crossed in front of her in a pose that she recognizes. Showing that you are indestructible serves to elicit a precise reaction in yourself before anyone else. You think you are strong and only then you can convince the whole world of it.  
  
"You're something more," she says. For the first time she sees a spark that gives her hope. "You're a queen."  
  
*  
  
"Did you know? When you gave Arya the dagger, did you already see what would happen?" asks Sansa.  
  
And about Theon, she wants to know, but doesn't ask. Perhaps she fears the answer. Her eyes show everything he has to know. Fixed on him, sad and tired, they seem to ask, _did you know about him too?_  
  
His silence is the assent she needed. The effects of actions always go beyond the specific intentionality of men; men do more than they know and often don't know what they do.  
  
"No more secrets, Bran. Promise me."  
  
He promises and keeps the promise immediately.  
  
*  
  
"I think I owe you a thanks. Your advice... it was a good one," Sansa says.  
  
"This girl is pleased to serve," Arya automatically replies. The words leave a strange taste in her mouth and must sound exotic to Sansa's ears, but she doesn't blink.  
  
When she returns to her the dragonglass dagger that she gave her during the battle, Arya refuses to take it. "What are you doing?" She frowns. "It was a gift. It's yours now."  
  
_Like the deaths you caused._  
  
Not that Sansa told her anything. It wasn't necessary. She knows death and knows how to recognize those who learn to use it as a weapon.  
  
"You saved all of us," Sansa says and her voice crackles like a fireplace. It exudes warmth and pride. The ice of fear under her skin begins to melt.  
  
Arya thinks of Beric Dondarrion, Theon, Lyanna Mormont, hundreds of bodies piled up to be burned.  
  
"No," she murmurs grimly, the stitches on her forehead stinging like a snake's bite. "Not everyone."  
  
*  
  
"Where have you been?" Jon welcomes her, more harshly than he intends.  
  
He sees her immobilize in her steps and then sigh. She appears exhausted, held up by invisible threads of fortitude and pure obstinacy. Consumed as a candle whose wick is slowly languishing in the wax. And that's exactly how he feels too. Every muscle in his body seems to scream, every bone, every fragment of his mind seems to be immersed in boiling oil, like it's on fire.  
  
Sansa carefully closes the door behind her. She removes the cloak and place it on the back of a chair. "I was with Arya. And you?"  
  
_I was looking for you._ "With Sam."  
  
She raises her head to look at him and finally the song of ice and blood is silent. The enormity of the present and the situation in which they find themselves violently sneak inside him, supplanting tiredness, the physical need to collapse and sleep - for the first time in months with the hope that there will be no nightmares of white bones and impossibly blue eyes waiting for him in oblivion and tormenting his sleep.  
  
"We won," he says with wide eyes. Now that he has stated it aloud, the wonder is deafening. Clearly, he's not himself. He feels dazzled.  
  
On the other hand, Sansa's calmness, the way she keeps her distance, her voice devoid of any inflection, everything clashes with what he is feeling. He just wants to share with her the relief that is overwhelming him, the euphoria. They are alive. They are alive and have won.  
  
"Not yet," he hears her say with that strange sober, emotionless voice. "You have to be careful. Now more than ever. When you l'll march south..."  
  
"We don't have to talk about it now."  
  
Sansa runs a hand through her hair and the gesture puts him on alert, because it is so atypical for her, so vulnerable. "We will have to, sooner or later," she replies irritated. And maybe it's the way she looked away or blinked rapidly. Perhaps it is the strange grimace on her lips and the way her shoulders are slumped. The pallor, like a turtle trying to retreat back into its shell.  
  
One thing is certain. Sansa has become a master in the art of not showing what she feels, of camouflaging, deflecting.  
  
"Don't we deserve some peace?" He murmurs and the moment she turns her back to him and brings her hands closer to the fireplace - trembling and white - it's the one he moves away from the corner where he was.

Jon remains behind her without touching her, perfectly still. In silence. Waiting patiently for a gesture of encouragement, her permission. Even if the desire to touch her is tearing him apart from the inside, especially seeing the tremor move from her hands to her arms and then to the torso and -  
  
"If you want peace, then you have to fight. It's not over. But when it ends... When it ends..." he hears her hissing through her teeth, sucking the air, "promise me you will come back."  
  
"Sansa," he says and finally, _finally_ rests his forehead in the space between her shoulders and closes his eyes, inhaling deeply, his hands clenched on her hips.  
  
As if answering the plea in his voice, she intertwines her fingers between his, a bone-crushing grip.  
  
"I'll be here waiting for you. So you have to promise."  
  
_If you promise that you will be mine_. "I have something to tell you. It's about my mother."  
  
He feels the slight but perceptible traction in her back. Enough for him to understand, even before she quietly admits, "I already know."  
  
"Bran?" He questions, even if he knows the answer.  
  
Sansa nods.  
  
Slowly he lifts his head and rests it against her neck. He would like to trace the line of her jaw with his lips. He sighs against her ear and in response Sansa's intake of breath becomes the only sound in the room.  
  
"There is one thing I want to do, but I know it's wrong and that I shouldn't," he says in a voice enriched by fatigue and something that's not it at all. It's the fatigue derived from a battle, but not of the kind when he fought an ice dragon last night.  
  
"Oh," she exhales and he instinctively moves his head to see her face. The flames of the fireplace and the light of the candles give her hair reflections of copper, an unnatural shine to her eyes. Then, almost without him noticing how, she tilts her head and presses her mouth firmly against his.  
  
The impression of the kiss is that of the seal on the wax. Like an indelible mark printed on his skin by a red-hot iron.  
  
"You were taking too long," she murmurs and her smile radiates an intolerable intensity of glare. He kisses her again, fast and possessive to tastes that smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.  
> (E. E. Cummings)
> 
> The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.  
> (Marco Tullio Cicerone)


End file.
